The present invention generally relates to business nonstandard character processing apparatuses and systems and computer readable storage mediums, and more particularly to a business nonstandard character processing apparatus and system which process nonstandard characters for each work which are not predefined, and are suited for application to a computer which is coupled to a network and carries out a plurality of works, and to a computer readable storage medium which stores programs for processing nonstandard characters for each work which are not predefined.
Normally, a character set and a code set which are predefined by a standard or the like when processing characters in a computer. The character set is a set of characters which are processed, and the code set is a set of characters and numbers or character codes assigned to the characters.
A provider of a computer hardware or a provider of an operating system which controls the computer usually provide character fonts in the form of a font random access memory (ROM) or a font file by using some kind of character code as the precondition.
When processing a character which is not defined by the character set, the user of the computer creates his own character font and stores this character font in a file. By registering this file as a nonstandard character file, it becomes possible to use a character which is not defined by the standard.
The need to register nonstandard characters is small in the case of a large computer which is originally designed to process a large number of kinds of characters. For this reason, the number of registrable nonstandard characters does not become a problem in the large computer, and a single large computer can simultaneously process various works.
But recently, the performance of small computers has improved considerably, and there are now demands to carry out on a small computer, such as a personal computer, the work that is conventionally carried out by the large computer. However, in the small computer such as the personal computer, the number of kinds of characters that can be processed is small to start with, and the number of registrable nonstandard characters is not sufficient to enable the small computer to carry out the word of the large computer. For this reason, the small computer can only carry out limited work, and when carrying out a plurality of works on the small computer, the work must be limited to the work that does not process the nonstandard characters.
Furthermore, there are demands to process various kinds of works by connecting the small computer such as the personal computer to a network, and consequently, there are demands to realize a technique for efficiently processing a large amount of nonstandard characters.